Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02

by John G. Nicolay; John Hay

Governor Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared his very decided approbation of the proposition for two reasons—first, that it afforded the President a great opportunity for a high and statesmanlike treatment of the whole subject of agitation, and the proper remedies to prevent it; secondly, because, in his judgment, the failure to procure that redress which the South would be entitled to and would demand (and that failure he thought certain), would tend to unite the entire South in a decided disunion movement. He thought disunion inevitable, and under present circumstances most desirable.

Mr. Holt, the Postmaster-General, thought the proposition for the convention dangerous, for the reason that if the call should be made and it should fail to procure redress, those States which now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion. Without this common demand and common failure he thought there would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation.

Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the plan of calling for a general convention—thought his State (Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit in favor of disunion.

Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for the convention—coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing the Northern fanatics to their senses.

I expressed myself decidedly opposed to any rash movement, and against the idea of secession at this time. I did so because I think that Lincoln's administration will fail, and be regarded as impotent for good or evil within four months after his inauguration. We are to meet to-morrow at 1 o'clock.

Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert E. Lee," etc., pp. 790-94.

November 10 ... We had a Cabinet meeting to-day, at which the President read a very elaborate document, prepared either as a part of his message or as a proclamation. It was well written in the main, and met with extravagant commendation from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt. Cobb, Thompson, and myself found much to differ from in it,—Cobb because it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule, and because it reprehended the policy of the Kansas-Nebraska bill; Thompson because of the doctrine of acquiescence and the hostility to the secession doctrine. I objected to it because I think it misses entirely the temper of the Southern people and attacks the true State-Rights doctrine on the subject of secession. I do not see what good can come of the paper, as prepared, and I do see how much mischief may flow from it.

It is an open question whether we may accept these extracts at their full literal import. Either the words "coerce," "submission," "use of force," and so on, are written down by the diarist in a sense different from that in which they were spoken, or the President and several of his counselors underwent an amazing change of sentiment. But in a general way they show us that on the fourth day after Lincoln's election the Buchanan Cabinet was already divided into hostile camps. Cass of Michigan, Secretary of State, Toucey of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, Black of Pennsylvania, Attorney-General, and Holt of Kentucky, Postmaster-General, were emphatic Unionists; while Cobb of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, Thompson of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and Floyd of Virginia, Secretary of War, were secessionists—the latter yet professing devotion to the Union, but with such ifs and buts as left sufficiently clear evidence of his inevitable drift to disloyalty.

All impulses of prudence and patriotism ought to have moved the President to reconstruct his Cabinet. But instead of some energetic executive act of this character, he seems to have applied himself to the composition of a political essay to teach the North its duty; as if his single pen had power to change the will of the people of the United States upon a point which they had decided by their votes only four days previously after six years of discussion. In the draft of this document, which he read to his Cabinet on November 10, we have the important record that "it inculcated submission to Lincoln's election, and intimated the use of force to coerce a submission to his rule"—positions which Floyd records were "met with extravagant commendations from General Cass, Governor Toucey, Judge Black, and Mr. Holt." This was a true touchstone; it instantly brought out not only the open secessionism of Cobb and Thompson, but the disguised disloyalty of Floyd.

It is a strange historical phenomenon that, with the President and a majority of the Cabinet in this frame of mind, the South should have been permitted to organize rebellion. The solution seems to lie in the temporizing feebleness of Buchanan and in the superior finesse and daring conspiracy of Cobb, Thompson, and Floyd.